Keap campaigns are built using goals and sequences – goals are the triggers, and sequences are what happens as a result.

Inside your sequence there are three timer types available to control the timing and pace of the steps; Delay, Date, and Field

If you want everything in your sequence to happen all at once, you might not need a timer.

But odds are at different times you want to use each of these.

Let’s take a look at each of them.

What are Delay Timers?

Delay timers are the most common timer – they simply delay the contact for a set amount of time before allowing them to progress forward.

“Wait 3 days before sending this email”

What are Date Timers?

Date timers are the easiest to understand – they are used to schedule a specific step for a date on the calendar – or, a range of dates.

“Send this email on July 1st”

What are Field Timers?

Field timers are used to schedule sequence steps before or after a date unique to the contact record – like, their birthday, or their membership renewal date.

“Send this email 3 days before their next mentoring appointment.”

An important note for field timers is that it will use the value in the contact field at the moment they enter the sequence – so if the date isn’t set at that point, it won’t be able to schedule the timers.

And similarly, if the date changes after someone has already entered the sequence, it won’t reschedule unless they’re removed and re-added (or the campaign is republished).

All three of the Keap timer types have their individual merit, and plenty of scenarios where they are useful.

This video covers how to use each of them and when they might serve you best:

Another common misconception is that you can only use one timer type per sequence – which isn’t actually true.

The reality is that you can’t connect two timers of different types – but you can use more than one timer type in the same sequence.

The key is using separate ‘start’ triggers for the different lanes.

The more you understand the timers, you’ll find them increasibly flexible and powerful.

Here are a few creative examples of how the timers can be used in unconventional ways:

Keap Timers Puzzle 1
Keap Timers Puzzle 2
Keap Timers Puzzle 3

Thanks for reading – as a reminder, this video is from chapter two in the CB Trilogy course. Thanks to a partnership with Keap, the full course is available here.

Keap’s fulfillment lists are a personal favorite of mine – and they’re definitely one of the most underused features inside of the campaign builder.

Or maybe in all of Keap (Max Classic only, I believe).

You know how automation usually happens on an individual by individual basis?

Like, if 100 people enter a sequence, there will be 100 emails sent (one to each) or 100 tags applied (one to each) or 100 tasks created (one for each), right?

Well, fulfillment lists allow you to batch those contacts together, and process them as a group.

When would you want this?

Good question – it’s for instances where you want to receive a list of the people who hit that step – like, a list of event attendees on the morning of your event (so you can print name badges).

There’s no need to receive 100 different notifiations, you can just get a single spreadsheet of those people sent directly to you.

Or, a list of people who you need to ship books to, or a list of questions you’ve received in preparation for a presentation, etc.

Just look for the fulfillment list item in the processes section inside of a sequence.

The use cases go on and on, but the solution for each is Fulfillment Lists. This video demonstrates how you can set it up.

So that’s fulfillment lists in a nutshell – do you have an obvious use case for them in your business?

For more training on Keap’s campaign builder, check out these resources:

Campaign Builder 101 [Blog Post]
CB Trilogy [Virtual Course]

As you’ve probably heard me say, I believe the campaign builder is the most powerful tool on the planet for small businesses.

This blog post addresses a fairly specific Keap question about a relatively advanced scenario:

“How do I up split a complex campaign?”

It was prompted by a question Steven, an OG Member, asked yesterday when he realized the campaign he’d built had spiraled a bit out of control.

Is the campaign functional? Sure.

But it’s cumbersome – and when a campaign is that big it has a number of drawbacks; it’s harder to manage, to modify, and to report on.

And it takes forever to load (ever seen this horror show?).

So, the answer is to generally build your campaigns in smaller more modularized structures, as Mike advises here.

And then chain those structures together, like this.

Great advice – but it doesn’t help Steven (or anyone who has an unruly campaign).

How do I break up a big Keap campaign?

But if you have an existing campaign that you want to divide into smaller campaigns you can – but there are some considerations.

First, you’ll want to decide what you want to happen to the contacts who are already in the automation.

And second, you’ll want to pay close attention to the functioning goals – some goal methods live in a singular campaign, and can’t easily be moved.

In this video I’ll show you the various ways to divide up a bloated campaign, and talk through those considerations as well.

So there you have it – now you (or Steven) have a process you can follow for making your goliath campaign more manageable.

And, in case this all feels a little advanced – here are two resources I recommend to keep exercising those campaign builder muscles:

Campaign Builder 101 [Blog Post]
CB Trilogy [Virtual Course]

The campaign builder is Keap’s automation engine – understanding how to harness this tool is the key to multiplying the ROI you get from Keap every month,

So, the Decision Diamond in Keap is a hyper valuable segmentation tool.

It lets us branch contacts into different paths so that we can tailor the automation we design to feel more targeted, and more personal.

(More on that here)

And Keap has, wisely, added a default setting so you can choose one of your existing sequences to send them to if they don’t meet the criteria for any of your rules.

But the challenge with this well-meaning feature is that it only lets you select from the two sequences that have rules.

So what if you want to send the contact somewhere else?

Well, you’d have to add a third sequence.

That seems easy enough, but it presents a problem.

The Problem

Well, by default a sequence is open to anyone, right?

So unless we set up rules – all contacts will wind up going into that third sequence.

So that means we need to add rules.

And if this is the ‘otherwise’ sequence, meaning they go here when they don’t meet the other rules – then we’d need to build out the opposite of the rules for Sequence A and B.

And that’s fine if the rules are simple.

But what if the rules are more complex?

That would be exhausting to rebuild – and complicated to invert.

The Solution

So, Scott Richins, one of the world class OG Infusionsoft Experts came up with a super clever (and relatively simple) hack to solve this.

Check it out:

If you find yourself building lots of campaigns, or managing complex decision diamonds, then tuck this hack in your bag o’ tricks.

Massive props to Scott for sharing this approach, and for the countless other things he’s taught me over the years.

There are plenty of scenarios in business where you want something to happen on a recurring basis – and we’ve covered the fundamentals of looping campaigns in Keap, but today I wanted to share a twist on this for a looping monthly fulfillment process.

So, for context, the scenario is this: Let’s say there’s a membership group, and each month we want to send the members something (it could be access to content, or a physical gift box, etc).

But the twist here is that we want to automatically exclude anyone who either a) cancels or b) misses a payment, and lets their account fall out of good standing.

This video breaks down a campaign that you can use for this process, and dynamically sort out the folks who shouldn’t be eligible:

Now obviously this is a fairly specific use case – but this concept, and the corresponding Keap campaign could easily be adapted for serving prospects (like creating a custom ‘call’ list), or modified to loop at a different pace (weekly, quarterly, etc).

if you found this useful, have questions, or ideas for where it might fit in your business – drop a comment below.

Thanks for reading.